Sunday, April 03, 2016

Things that can't go on, don't

Zero Hedge: "Stanley Druckenmiller: "This Is The Most Unsustainable Situation I Have Seen In My Career"."
The disaster that Druckenmiller sees coming for the United States is all about changing demographics and entitlement spending. They don’t add up to a sustainable situation.

In 1940, entitlement payments, which include everything from disability payments to Social Security to Medicare, amounted to just over 20% of annual government spending in the United States.

Today, entitlement spending has swelled to nearly 70% of the annual federal budget.
Emphasis in original.  It's remarkable that in this political season where candidates are putatively talking about the future, nobody is talking about the state of entitlement spending except to expand it (looking at you, Bernie.)  Republicans have finally learned that pointing out the parlous state of the Medicare and Social Security Trust Funds is a ticket to Loserville.  Better to let them collapse under their own insolvency and then pick up the pieces later.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lately, it's looking like Medicare and Social Security will outlast the Republican Party.

Anonymous said...

Translation:

Hearing about the unsustainability of the liberal welfare state causes me pain. Let's talk about one of my more pleasant fantasies instead.

Projection, your honor said...

For a man who continually claims to be amused, you don't seem to grasp the "joke" thing.

The "fantasy" thing said...

Yup. Made to distract from something that was anything but a joke.

Anonymous said...

Settle down, Beavis. You couldn't distract this blog from Social Security with an H-bomb.

We'll address entitlements the same way we'll address climate change. Kicking and screaming, decades late, and only at the most expensive possible moment of crisis.